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Baby boomer milestones deserve celebration, annoying or not

50th anniversaries of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and JFK’s assassination were just the beginning

Surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr share a moment on The Beatles: The Night That Changed America - A Grammy Salute, just one of many celebrations to come of 1960s milestones. (Cliff Lipson / CBS)

By Joel RubinoffTorstar News Service

Fri., Feb. 14, 2014

I’ve been listening to the grousing for months:

Why did The Beatles get so much press last week for appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show a half century ago?

Who cares about the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination?

Why do baby boomers get all the attention? Not fair, not fair.

It’s the perennial cry of the jilted younger sibling, the overlooked, underappreciated generations unfortunate enough to come of age in any decade other than the ’60s.

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Personally, I loved the ’60s but, as a pre-adolescent, I spent most of them smearing poop on the walls and running around with underwear on my head, so my perspective is basically irrelevant.

I heard about it though, over and over, from people 10 years older who never tired of reminding everyone how they single-handedly changed the world.

The Sixties Generation. Youthquake. The pig in the python. The Only Generation That Matters.

They protested the Vietnam War, fought for civil rights, championed women’s lib, put a man on the moon, sparked a sexual revolution, tuned in, turned on, dropped out and had one hell of a party at Woodstock.

This, of course, sparked a massive backlash, because nobody wants to hear how all the good stuff happened before they were born, and how everything in their own lifetime is a big juicy wad of suckage.

“Shut up about the ’60s!” became the rallying call of my generation and those that followed. “Shut up about how you fought The Man, broke the rules and dragged us into a new age of enlightenment.

Jeez, we have our own accomplishments to trumpet, like the invention of the iPhone and, er . . . low fat brownies.

The problem, for those slighted by the cruel tides of history, is that it’s now 2014, which means that every major event of the ’60s is ripe for revisitation by a culture obsessed with 50th anniversaries.

Trust me, if you didn’t like hearing about boomer milestones like Woodstock and the moon landing during their 10th, 25th or 40th go-rounds, you’re really going to hate the wall-to-wall commemorations about to slam you upside the head for their 50th.

And the historical landmarks are coming fast and furious:

The Beatles’ first North American tour, first movie (A Hard Day’s Night) and first-ever occupation of the top five spots on the Billboard singles chart

First Ford Mustang rolls off the assembly line.

First African-American wins the Best Actor Oscar (Sidney Poitier, Lilies of the Field).

Muhammad Ali named world heavyweight boxing champ

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which shifted the Vietnam War into overdrive

Civil Rights Act of 1964, which abolished racial segregation.

Premieres of Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady

Martin Luther King, Jr. receives Nobel Peace Prize.

And that’s just 1964.

If you look to the next five years, there are major anniversaries for the Summer of Love, Expo 67, Trudeaumania, the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy, the Manson Family murders, Bob Dylan going electric and the debut of Star Trek.

On one hand, it’s shameless nostalgia peddling: feel-good opium for the masses.

On the other — and I say this as a charter member of the “Don’t bug me about the ’60s!” club — the attention accorded most of these events is, ulp, completely justified.

Why? Because love them or hate them, the ’60s really did change the world.

Suddenly, in the intense six-year period between the death of John F. Kennedy and Americans landing on the moon, the universe shifted, the old signposts were obliterated and a bold new order was established.

And 50 years later it deserves recognition

Take last week’s TV tribute to the birth of Beatlemania.

I’m as cynical as the next post-boomer crybaby, and any show that showcases Katy Perry trilling “Yesterday” in an off-key warble isn’t going to endear itself to anyone over 12.

But even I felt a twinge of emotion when the iconic camera shot finally arrived: Paul McCartney, 71, and Ringo Starr, 73, side by side, pumping out Beatles classics with gleeful abandon.

Their voices were scratchy, two of their founding members long dead. But these were the remnants of the most influential rock band of all time — the only one, arguably, that will be remembered a century from now.

It was history.

“I think it’s really good when we go back and revisit what was going on, because a large chunk of the population doesn’t know,” insists Bob Thompson, pop culture professor at Syracuse University.

“It’s an ad hoc history lesson. Even those who were around will see and learn a lot.”

Not to sound like my Grade 11 history teacher, but it’s because the barriers were blown away by a glop of restless, entitled young people who came of age at the same pivotal moment that people like me were able to grow up a decade later complaining about disco while loafing unceremoniously on the couch.

Racism. Sexism. Environmentalism.

By that point, most of the major battles had been fought and the spectre of a world in rigorous lockstep, hiding from communists, terrified of loud music and new ideas, had been relegated to the sidelines.

So there is an appreciation. But with so many anniversaries barrelling down the pike — and because boomers are anything but humble about their achievements — it’s important to know where to draw the line.

Do we, for example, need a half-century blowout to memorialize the Elvis Presley film Kissin’ Cousins?

How about the TV debuts of Flipper, The Munsters and Gilligan’s Island?

The introduction of Pop Tarts, Lucky Charms and the Moog synthesizer?

Pop Tarts may seem an innocuous thing to reminisce about, but it points to the danger when the past hijacks the present: distorted perspective, cultural ennui, resentment from those whose own world-beating accomplishments have been ignored or forgotten.

“Thanks to us baby boomers,” writes an unrepentant James Wolcott in Vanity Fair, “the remainder of this decade looms like a commemorative rerun of a show you later arrivals didn’t see the first time.

“It will be a Ferris wheel of golden anniversaries, a rinse cycle of ’60s nostalgia nourishing the collective narcissism of boomers.”

I appreciate his gently goading tone, but personally, I can’t get too worked up.

In six more years, the ’60s tributes will be over and the memorial sledgehammer will move on to the polyester-clad Me Decade.

Trust me, if you thought the media tsunami for The Beatles and JFK was extreme, wait till the 50th anniversary of The Banana Splits.

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